11 Children Found in Makeshift New Mexico Compound, Police Say

Police found children living in filthy conditions in a compound in New Mexico. The kids had rags for clothing and very little food or water.

(Published Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2018)

What to Know

Eleven children were taken into protective custody after being found living in filthy conditions at a New Mexico compound, police said

Two men were arrested after an armed standoff with police

Police searched the compound to look for one of the men, who has been wanted for child abduction

Law enforcement officers searching a rural northern New Mexico compound for a missing 3-year-old boy didn't locate him but found 11 other children in filthy conditions and hardly any food, a sheriff said Saturday.

The children ranging in age from 1 to 15 were removed from the compound in the small community of Amalia, New Mexico, and turned over to state child-welfare workers, Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe said.

Two men were arrested during the search while two women at the compound were initially detained before being released pending further investigation, Hogrefe said.

One of the men, 39-year-old Siraj Wahhaj, was jailed on a Georgia warrant alleging child abduction while the other man, identified only as Lucas Morten, was arrested on suspicion of harboring a fugitive, Hogrefe said.

Hogrefe said authorities had conducted surveillance of the compound while looking for the missing boy before he decided Thursday to get a search warrant immediately after a Georgia investigator forwarded a message in which someone at the compound reportedly told another person that people at the compound were starving and needed water.

Hogrefe said the search did not turn up the missing boy, identified by the sheriff as AG Wahhaj, but that investigators had reason to believe the boy had been at the compound fairly recently.

The adults and children appeared like "refugees not only with no food or fresh water, but with no shoes, personal hygiene and basically dirty rags for clothing," the sheriff said. "We all gave the kids our water and what snacks we had - it was the saddest living conditions and poverty I have seen."